LG plans to use webOS for Smart TVs

The HP TouchPad, which runs on webOS 3.0, may have failed to gain market traction, but LG don’t seem worried about it one bit as they still proceeded with the acquisition of the promising platform with plans of making it the bread and butter of their upcoming Smart TVs.

LG Electronics now has full stewardship over webOS and the brilliant minds behind it, as well as its documentations and websites. However, patents and other components of the platform will remain under HP’s control and LG was only allowed licensed to it.

As mentioned earlier, the South Korean manufacturer is looking to use webOS on their Smart TVs. Before this acquisition, LG has been using both their in-house platform (NetCast) and Google’s Android on their idiot boxes. So does this mean that LG’s dumping their Google TV lineup? According to Scott Ahn, President and Chief Technological Officer of LG, the company will still “continue to serve our Android fans with an extended lineup of Google TV.”

It has been speculated that LG is planning to release their next generation Smart TVs which will run webOS in 2014. The question now is if the TV is going to be a standalone product or will it be accompanied by a smartphone and/or tablet just like what Apple and Google have done with their respective platforms.